Warp Spawn - Matt Ralphs Read online

  The warm air, heavy with a nauseating tang of copper, caught in Matteus’s throat. His mind reeled as the violence of the scene hit him like a kick in the stomach. He heard one of the ratings moan as he vomited in enormous, raking heaves. He dropped his club which rolled across the floor and came to rest next to the gently steaming corpses.

  Matteus’s horror deepened when he noticed the manacles on the wall. Dangling grotesquely like meat joints in a butcher’s window were the woman’s arms. Gunnar was pounding his fists on the cell wall, his simple mind unable to-cope with what he saw.

  When Matteus heard the lift door rasp open at the other end of the corridor he found his senses again. He slapped Gunnar hard and indicated for them all to be quiet. They edged back against the wall, grim faced and trying to ignore the terrible vista of death that lay before them. The security rating who had been sick wiped his mouth with a shaking hand. Matteus caught his eye and nodded encouragingly. The rating nodded back. They turned their eyes on the door and waited, with weapons at the ready.

  They exhaled in relief as the familiar whine of Drant’s chair grew louder towards them. They could hear the little girl’s voice over the noise of the motors.

  ‘Don’t bring her in here,’ Matteus called, but it was too late. They rounded the corner and glided into the cell.

  Drant gasped.

  ‘Damn it, get her out of here, will you?’ Matteus ordered, but the girl slipped off Drant’s knee and padded barefoot into the room.

  ‘Mummy?’ she said. The men watched her, not knowing what to do. She turned to Matteus, her blue eyes shining in the gloom. ‘Is that my mummy?’ she asked.

  Matteus looked again at the bloody mess in the middle of the floor, for the first time noticing the coal black hair spread out like a fan.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, voice cracking, trying desperately to think of something comforting to say; but the scene of devastation around them negated all words of succour.

  She crouched down next to her mother, the bottom of her white dress becoming saturated with blood. Glancing up and cocking her head, she sniffed the air. She looked perplexed, as if inwardly struggling to take in what had happened.

  ‘He’s been here.’ She fixed her gaze on Matteus. ‘Mummy must have made him angry.’

  Being under her scrutiny unnerved him. There was something old within her eyes, something old and wise. ‘It’s best not to make him angry,’ she continued.

  Matteus swallowed, attempting a smile.

  ‘Best not to make who angry, child?’

  ‘My friend.’

  ‘What is your friend like?’

  She looked appraisingly at Gunnar who stood at the edges of the room shaking his head as if trying to clear it of heretical thoughts.

  ‘Bigger than him,’ she said. ‘Much bigger. He looks after me. But sometimes he can be very messy.’ She gestured to the scattered flesh parts and liquid pools around her. ‘I can make him come back, if you like.’

  ‘No!’ Matteus said, too loudly.

  She frowned. ‘But I want him here,’ she said petulantly. Bowing her head she began to soundlessly mouth words. Instantly the atmosphere in the room became heavy and time seemed to slow down; the temperature plummeted as the girl became the epicentre of a psychic storm, her long black hair standing on end, electrified in whipping blue bursts of energy. It looked like her elfin face was wreathed in headless, writhing snakes. The air around her thickened and shimmered; to Matteus her outline became hazy. The only point of clarity in the unearthy vision that had once been a petite and seemingly innocent child, was a look of hatred centred in her once sky-blue eyes which were now deepest black and vacant of humanity. Leman the rat squealed and leapt from Gunnar’s top pocket and dashed out into the corridor. Gunnar bellowed, lunging for the child.

  Quick as lightning she spun round to face him. A fleeting look of fear and confusion swept over her face but it was gone as soon as it had appeared. She spat an ugly command and the giant was lifted clean off his feet and hurled bodily out of the door as if he were rag doll tossed aside by a bored child. He smashed into the corridor wall, rupturing pipes. Hot vaporous steam erupted with an explosive hiss. For a few seconds Gunnar sat there, stunned, then he leapt to his feet and pounded off after his beloved rat, weeping in distress.

  The other men stood aghast as the child spun to face them with an expression of malevolent fury. The security ratings sprang towards her, power mauls swinging in deadly arcs. She uttered something and they were catapulted into the ceiling, skulls impacting with wet thuds. She held them there, then let them drop to the deck like unstrung puppets.

  She turned her gaze to Matteus and Drant, her tiny mouth chanting words of arcane power. Matteus felt them invade his mind and take over his senses…

  The chase was over. Rain fell about them, soaking the walls of the blind alley; and she shivered as it ran down her neck. Her parents clutched her to them as the gang advanced. The tallest stepped forward, boots splashing in shiny black puddles. She looked down, frightened, catching her reflection in the water at her feet. She struggled to master her emotions, but did not know how. Something inside her, powerful and possessive, began to surface.

  The man pulled back his hood. His face was hard, but his mouth hinted at amusement as he watched the family shiver. Rendered in blue on his highbrow was the Imperial spread-eagle.

  ‘Elusive, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘But no one slips through my grasp. The Inquisition will not be mocked by you, Chaos filth.’

  ‘Do as you will,’ her father said. ‘We serve the true powers of the warp. Soon you will weep before her gaze.’

  The inquisitor barked a laugh. ‘Then I sentence you to return to her.’

  His band of hunters drew forth weapons from their robes.

  ‘Fire at will.’

  She felt her mind flex like a muscle, and the air around her became stiff with cold fingers of energy. In her head she formed a shape with claws and a soulless heart. She screamed, clutching her temples as the vision became solid.

  She continued to look down at her reflection as the cries of the inquisitor mingled with the sounds of renting flesh and splitting bone.

  The vision ended and Matteus found himself on the other side of the closed door with Drant breathing heavily beside him.

  ‘Cultists,’ he whispered, almost to himself. ‘And the girl…’ He looked with uncomprehending eyes at Drant. ‘They used her to channel the fiend that is now on my ship.’

  ‘At your invitation, Matteus,’ Drant said sullenly.

  Matteus heaved on the cell door, but it was wedged shut, held there by the child’s incredible psychic strength.

  ‘Where’s Gunnar when you need him?’ He activated a vox-com: ‘Bridge, what’s our status?’

  Eusoph’s voice crackled over the speaker, his usually commanding tones steeped in barely controlled panic.

  ‘We’re under attack; they’re trying to get through the blast doors.’ In the background Matteus could here fearful cries mingling with the sound of tearing metal. ‘There’s something already on board. Reports of an intruder are flooding in from all over the Bess. I can’t get hold of engineering. I sent a squad down to see and they haven’t come back. We can hear screams in the vent shafts…’

  ‘Calm down, Eusoph. How’s the navigator doing?’

  ‘It’s too late for that. Didn’t you hear me? They’re already on board!’

  Matteus slumped against the bulkhead; feeling like someone was filling in a grave over his head. He could hear Eusoph’s irregular breathing magnified over the speaker, and behind that, shrieks of terror. Someone was shouting: ‘Back to your posts, or I’ll drop you where you stand!’ Chaos was reigning supreme on his craft. Matteus knew it was time.

  ‘Eusoph, I’m authorising a ship-wide abandonment. All crew to the escape pod, at the double. Tell them to stop for nothing. Don’t wait for me. As soon as all personnel are accounted for and I’ve got the ship out of the warp, abandon her. Just get the nav
igator hooked in to the ships systems before you go. Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand. Eusoph out.’ Mercifully, the sounds of turmoil on the bridge clicked off.

  Matteus knelt down next to Drant. ‘That means you too: bail as soon as we drop out of warp.’

  ‘We’ll go nowhere without our captain. Besides, you must be held accountable for this, old friend.’

  ‘Get to the pod, you old fool.’ In the cell the little girl wallowed in blood. She dangled her fingers in it, giggling, and began to daub patterns on the wall; stylised runes in the shape of ever wakeful eyes. They glowed like beacons. The feeding frenzy in the warp increased in violence. Deep in the ship, something responded.

  THE SHIP BOARD vox-com had been left on an open channel. As Matteus shinned up ladders and sprinted down gangways on his way to the bridge, he heard the shrieks and dying prayers of his crew from the vox-pickups dotted around the vessel. It was obvious that many were not going to make it to the escape pod. He charged across gantries, legs pounding on the steel floors, tormented by the cries of the murdered as they echoed around him. His boots were spattered with blood and several times he slipped in the wetness.

  He reached the bridge with the ship quaking under the escalating attack from the warp-creatures as they scratched and lacerated the hull. He stared, awestruck, as part of the blast-shield was peeled away with a tortured screech. He turned his eyes away from the dizzying whorl of distorted stars outside and dashed into the navigator’s chamber.

  The navigator lay curled on the deck, twitching and jerking spasmodically. Cables sprouted from plugs in his head attaching him to the ship.

  Matteus shook him roughly, ‘Awake, blast your eye! Get us out of the warp! Drop us out, now!’

  The navigator whispered, voice barely audible above the din of the attack, ‘So much malevolence toward us, strain’s too much…’

  ‘No! Get us out, for Emperor’s sake, don’t condemn us!’

  ‘Trying…’ the navigator murmured. A grating sound filled the room as the blast door was at last torn from its housing; a victorious gibbering filtered through from outside. Warp light streamed in, Matteus shielded his eyes and cried out in fear. The navigator screamed as his frail body succumbed to a final violent spasm; the warp-light died and silence descended.

  ‘It is done,’ he said, his face tranquil.

  Matteus collapsed onto the deck, relief flooding through him.

  ‘We are free,’ the navigator whispered through raking gasps.

  Before Matteus could thank him, a vision from his worst nightmare lumbered into the chamber, bringing with it a cloying stench of death. Walking upright and fully four yards tall, it stooped under the door; a black shadow of catastrophe. Its grossly swollen head turned left and right, as thick drool streamed from slavering, fanged jaws. Long arms, ending with lethal white talons, lashed out with deadly speed and impaled the navigator through his belly. He let out a weak bleat of pain, and fell silent.

  Matteus acted instinctively, dashing through the monster’s muscular legs and diving over his command chair on the bridge. He scrabbled underneath and found the shotgun he kept there for emergencies. Training the gun on the door with shaking hands he fumbled for the safety catch; but the creature was on him, foot-long claws raking his arm and sending the shotgun skittering out of reach.

  Matteus had a second to register the enormous beast that towered over him; jaws wide in a silent scream of malignant rage; hot, rank breath blasting his face. A part of his mind screamed when he noticed an ear attached to a length of flesh dangling from a gore stained incisor. Matteus shut his eyes and waited for death.

  ‘We go.’

  ‘We wait.’

  Eusoph looked at Drant incredulously, ‘He’s dead. Nearly everyone’s dead. I’m in command. We go.’ He reached over to the launch icon.

  Drant grabbed his wrist and pulled Eusoph’s face close to his own.

  ‘We wait for our captain,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘I insist.’

  Something in the old man’s eyes told Eusoph it was dangerous to argue. He backed off, chastened.

  Ensign Jagg sat in the hatch to the escape pod from where he could see the fifty yard corridor leading back into the Bess.

  ‘All quiet at the mo, Drant.’

  ‘Let’s hope it stays that way, lad.’

  Drant fingered the handle of the autopistol he kept hidden under the armrest of his chair. ‘Let it come’, he thought.

  He thought of Nadia. Soon, perhaps, he would join her in whatever afterlife the Emperor had prepared for them.

  The staccato rattle of an autogun broke his reverie. He looked up to see the creature careen away, puce fluids bursting out of its carapace skin. Gunnar burst through the bridge doorway, howling with rage. He emptied the magazine then wielded the gun like a club, laying into the stumbling creature, bludgeoning its swollen head and roaring like a man possessed. It fell over, crashing into a gantry rail, blood oozing from a dozen wounds.

  Gunnar turned to Matteus and pointed to a pulsating bulge in his breast pocket.

  ‘Found Leman in kitchen.’ He patted the now buckled autogun. ‘Found this also.’

  ‘Thank the Emperor! Let’s go.’

  Behind them, even as they made their dash for freedom, the creature stirred. It knew this ship and where they were heading. It pounded after them with a hunter’s instinct to cut them off.

  ‘Two more corners and we’re there,’ Matteus cried euphorically. Gunnar grabbed him suddenly by the collar and clamped a gigantic hand over his mouth.

  ‘Leman frightened. He smells it.’ He pointed to the corner up ahead and whispered, ‘There.’

  A vast misshapen shadow was cast on the wall up ahead; the creature had beaten them! Matteus crouched onto the floor, broken at last.

  Gunnar tapped him on the shoulder. A grin slowly crawled over his face, the cognitive process for this action taking some time. He pointed up to the ceiling. Matteus followed his finger and managed a smile.

  JAGG LET OUT a cry. ‘Something’s there, at the end of the corridor!’

  It came at them in a stooped charge, a solid mass of glistening muscle and scything claws, wide shoulders taking up the entire width of the passageway. Drant scrabbled for his pistol, levelled it in shaking hands and fired a wild volley of shots that ricocheted off the walls, puncturing coolant pipes. Scorching steam gushed out, burning the creature which jumped back, suddenly cautious.

  Drant stared at the awful apparition that crouched just yards away, now wreathed in hissing vapours.

  ‘It has come,’ he breathed. ‘Emperor preserve us, it has come.’

  ‘We go, now!’ Eusoph yelled, reaching for the launch icon.

  Then a body fell down in front of them from the ventilation shaft in the ceiling of the corridor. It was quickly followed by another larger one. They tumbled inside.

  ‘Launch!’ Matteus screamed.

  Eusoph hit the icon, and as the creature reached the doors they slammed shut with a resounding clang. A gaping mouth, spraying juices, lashed violently against the glass. The men cowered back, crying out in shock. Gunnar pressed his face to the window, howling in delight,

  ‘Gunnar won! Gunnar won!’

  Launch thrusters ignited with a roar, pushing the pod out into the void. The fiend, cheated of its prey, stood framed in the doorway for a second, and then retreated back inside the Bess.

  ‘Now they are together, child and beast,’ Matteus said, exhausted. ‘Which is the bigger fiend, I wonder?’

  He glanced around, eyes bright with grief. The shuttle was built to take the full crew compliment of one hundred and forty-five men. A tally revealed twelve left, including him. No one spoke. No one could think of what to say.

  Matteus stared out of the window as the Sable Bess faded from view. A blinding flash and she disappeared entirely, swallowed into the fathomless netherworld of the warp, and taking with it the girl and her Chaos spawn.

  ON THE EDGE of a giant ra
diation cloud that was drifting across the Imperial freight route connecting Vrantis III to Jared’s World, a hunter lay in ambush. From hooked nose to elegantly tapered fins, the eldar raiding vessel was a study of harsh, lethal beauty.

  ‘Death can come from anywhere. She waits, then takes you into her embrace.’

  And so spoke her captain, Khorach Wyche, who sat poised in her command chair, the very embodiment of a deadly predator, waiting patiently to strike.

  ‘We have a contact,’ her pilot informed, relish fairly dripping from his voice.

  ‘Details?’

  ‘Single vessel, probably a freighter, low readings, minimum power. A fat human maggot for us to burst.’

  Khorach smiled the coldest of smiles. Easy pickings, yet she felt a twinge of disappointment. It was too easy. The cruel nature of her soul demanded a challenge, a foe that would wriggle and fight in her death grip. This prey would barely whimper before it fell to her guns and boarding crews.

  Her pilot was looking at her expectantly. She made her decision, the only possible one.

  ‘Assemble my raiders, I board with them today.’

  ‘As you wish,’ her pilot said. ‘I have a designation on the ship. It’s the Sable Bess.’

  Khorach waved her hand dismissively. ‘Unimportant. I just hope she puts up a struggle.’ She licked her thin lips and looked hungrily at the lumbering vessel as it hove across the vision portal.

  ‘Good hunting, lady, and good luck,’ her pilot called.

  ‘I won’t need luck for this. I anticipate no problems.’

  With that she turned and strode out of the bridge.